This startup is using machine learning to create animal product substitutes

The Not Company Down in Santiago, Chile, a five-person startup is using machine learning to figure out how to create its own versions of vegetarian substitutes for animal products.

Called the Not Company (or NotCo), the one-year-old company is rolling out its first products — NotMilk, NotMayo. NotYogurt, and NotCheese — across Chile over the next few months. "All I can tell you is that there are some star ingredients ranging from legumes to flowers," NotCo cofounder Matias Muchnick tells Tech Insider.

Machine learning, the programming technique where algorithms learn from data sets, has become the hot new thing in Silicon Valley. Google boss Eric Schmidt says that it's going to be the basis for every big new tech company over the next five years.

As is the fashion among machine learning companies, Notco has a name for its algorithm: Giuseppe.

"Giuseppe was created to understand molecular connections between food and the human perception of taste and texture," Muchnick says.

While the exact methodology is "classified," Muchnick says that NotCo is drawing on "data regarding how the brain works when it's given certain flavors, when you taste salty, umami, [or] sweet." That pre-existing data is being collected by the NotCo team, which includes a food scientist and a data scientist.

NotMilk won't just have the same flavor as dairy milk, he says. Through data crunching, it'll taste even better.

Machine learning works its magic from having great data to work with. Google's self-driving car learns how to drive from studying human drivers, not be being programmed to drive. The job-automating startup WorkFusion has tracked the behavior of 35 million people doing business-related tasks so its algorithms can sort through invoices and other paperwork. IBM taught its Watson supercomputer about human food preferences, yielding a cookbook that came out last year with creative dishes ranging from Indian burritos to Thai quiche.

Giuseppe allows NotCo to arrive at some novel ingredient combinations in its animal product replacements.

"Mushrooms, coconut, quinoa to create chocolate to a human being might sound crazy, but not to Giuseppe," Muchnick says.

Beyond creating products for shelves, Muchnick says that NotCo is also licensing its technology to small businesses and corporations that want to make their foods more sustainable. He says that the company has a deal with one of the biggest meat processing companies in South America to create meat substitutes, which could lead to a 15% reduction in animal product production in the company's business— and save millions of animals' lives.